7th character S
Patient was in the hospital for a fracture. He also has a history of previous motorcycle accident where he injured the nerve in right leg when the motorcycle laid on his leg for a period of time. He called it traumatic rhabdomyolysis. I coded t79.6xxs rhabdo and the S84.9xs for the nerve injury. I know I cannot use 2 S codes for the same injury. How would you code this?
Comments
What you have are 2 injuries. Traumatic rhabdomyolysis sequelae will mean that the effected muscle will be atrophied or unusable to a moderate or higher degree. This has to come from physician documentation and that is where you will code from to match to that sequelae code.
The nerve injury and it's sequelae (parathesis, numbness, etc) must be described as well in physician documentation. Each injury code with the "S" will have its own remaining symptoms or conditions left behind: rhabdo will be a muscle condition, nerve will be a nerve condition. Both must have MD documentation to code.
Nancy Wolverton RN, CCM, HCS-D-10
Utilization Review Specialist
Kindred at Home
Little Rock, Arkansas
501-508-8526 (o)
501-690-2027 (c)
Nancy.Wolverton@kindred.com
What you have are 2 injuries. Traumatic rhabdomyolysis sequelae will mean that the effected muscle will be atrophied or unusable to a moderate or higher degree. This has to come from physician documentation and that is where you will code from to match to that sequelae code.
The nerve injury and it's sequelae (parathesis, numbness, etc) must be described as well in physician documentation. Each injury code with the "S" will have its own remaining symptoms or conditions left behind: rhabdo will be a muscle condition, nerve will be a nerve condition. Both must have MD documentation to code.
Nancy Wolverton RN, CCM, HCS-D-10
Utilization Review Specialist
Kindred at Home
Little Rock, Arkansas
501-508-8526 (o)
501-690-2027 (c)
Nancy.Wolverton@kindred.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Pam Fritz [mailto:pfritz@lakelandhealth.org]
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2017 3:04 PM
To: HomeCareCoding-L
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [homecarecoding-l] 7th character S
Patient was in the hospital for a fracture. He also has a history of previous motorcycle accident where he injured the nerve in right leg when the motorcycle laid on his leg for a period of time. He called it traumatic rhabdomyolysis. I coded t79.6xxs rhabdo and the S84.9xs for the nerve injury. I know I cannot use 2 S codes for the same injury. How would you code this?
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